


The Old Road

by luna65



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguity, F/M, height prejudice, open-ended narrative, purposeful tense shifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 05:59:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8957569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luna65/pseuds/luna65
Summary: It tells you where to turn.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fairy story, paying tribute to that dark spirit of my imagination, a version of La Belle Dame Sans Merci perhaps.

_How doth ye come here? By the auld road? By the track which leads through the wild places?_

In Summer is best, in Summer the track is even and easy, you can walk and walk and walk and you might even end up where you mean to. The trees are tall and they whisper to you, that which they are told by the wind. And the sparrows and finches chatter and scold from the high branches, and you think you might be somewhere you don’t mean to be, somewhere you shouldn’t be, but you can never truly know where the track takes you, the old road.

It is something you do not learn until later.

In Winter it is harder to discern: a few roots jut from slush and frozen mud, the trees are still tall but so very stark and disapproving, and you cannot stop by the meadow, it only moans with emptiness and the cold which subtracts your sense of where you were meant to be. It tells you this is all only an echo. As are you.

*****

 

I stared into a mirror darkened around the edges with age and grime, the bright world behind me appearing less so, my friend behind me russet-haired and ruddy from the chill, looking at everything - shelves of glass and stacks of curios, and other objects which appeared old not by any sense of bygone aesthetic but merely from use and wear.

That bright world, it seemed to stretch so far, and I’d stepped out of its’ tableaux.

“Oooh look,” Anya breathed, and held out a stone. It was polished and gray, like a stone you might find in a riverbed, and there was an A carved upon it.

“Lucky,” I said.

“Maybe there’s one for you too,” she said, turning back to a bowl upon a shelf holding a number of similar stones. Her hand had closed around the stone, her stone now, I could sense the serenity she had to possess it.

I wanted the mirror, I wanted that world before me, the one which was shadowed and golden, somehow, in its’ warped reflection. But nothing in the shop had a price tag.

“No,” she murmured above the sound of stones being searched, clicking and clacking as they tumbled together from her grasp back into the bowl.

 _Pretty_ , I heard in their noise and it sounded both sweet and sour. _Pretty_ , I felt, as someone touched my hair, strands across their fingers and breath in my ear. All the while I stared and I heard and I felt but it was somewhere in that world, not this one.

 _Pretty_ , I heard, _because we do not say fair as you know not what it portends._

The woman behind the counter was old as the objects she sold, had offered us cups of mulled cider which held every nuance of the Fall, I could taste the iron of implacable cold and the spice of the change, and the bittersweet tang of decay, and all these things were pleasing even as to contemplate their significance was to be made somber.

“Let me wrap your pretty,” she said to Anya, “let me place it in a special bag.”

“I -” Anya set it on the glass display case and then picked it up again. “I want to hold it.”

The woman smiled. She had lovely cheekbones, the kind of face which makes one observe _such lovely bones_.

“Of course.”

Anya’s grip remained tight, enfolding her _pretty_. I imagined her hot skin against the cool smooth stone. Such a thought was intrusive, I blushed, and then I heard the voice again. I looked towards the woman but she was silent.

_Not here, pretty one. Not for you._

I thought of the sign at the side of the road: _Faire._ How we thought it meant something we’d not been able to find, or to see. But this shop, it was there and it was enough. Curiosity immediately fulfilled once we stepped inside and I looked into the mirror. I was still looking at the bright world behind me made wavering and slow and distant.

I was in focus, my eyes staring at light which assumed a form and looked like me. This was all: the world was my eyes staring and the voice in my head.

_Come._

 

*****

I found nothing but the mirror to interest me, and bits of colored glass. I could also see myself upon the surfaces, in a bubble of warm or cold vibration. There was a piece of green glass, jagged-edged and cloudy but also smooth and milky and making me think of a pond, or a well, of lying beneath the water, sunlight gathering upon the surface, drowsy warmth and the buzzing of insects, but beneath all was deep silence as I lay on the bottom and looked up through the water, looked at the light from so far away.

_Pretty._

I lay on the stones and looked up through the weight of water and of sediment. I held it and I stood, pressed down into my shoes, and I hungered for that serene detachment.

“I’m hungry,” Anya said, and I felt it too, then.

_Come._

“Is there somewhere we can eat around here?” she asked.

“What is Faire?” I asked.

“Fair?” she replied, echoing but not, amused.

“The sign on the road, it said _Faire_ but there’s no faire.”

“It tells you where to turn,” she said, then held out her hand for Anya’s money.

“But -”

“Up the track there is an inn,” she said.

“The track?”

We followed her to the entrance. She opened the door and pointed up and away from where we stood, from Anya’s mud-splattered car in front of the shop.

“The track, there is an inn, they have what you want.”

I heard something in her voice, like I heard a voice within the noise of the stones. Something underneath or entwined.

“Can we drive there?”

“We barely drove here!” I exclaimed, thinking of how we bumped and bounced up the road - track? - to reach the clearing where the shop was, along with a few other buildings. All wood-and-stone and quaint-looking, the sort of thing one would expect along a country highway. Tourist traps, if you’re being cynical. But this place was seemingly too isolated for that particular assessment.

“What does the sign say now?” I asked the woman. She held the door open, viewing us with expectations of departure. Not annoyed, just expectant.

“It tells you where to turn,” she said again.

Anya laughed at me and pulled me out the door. The day was cold but the sun was high.

“How far?” she called back, but the door was already shut, with just the faintest sound of bells.

That was it, what I had heard in her voice. Distant music - pipes and bells and drums.

I heard it then as we walked away from the shop and onto a dirt path which led into the woods we had come through, the woods which were all around.

I hear it.

 _Come_ , the voice said.

 

*****

The path was covered with leaves but you could see it, could discern tree roots and rocks seeming to outline it in the forest floor. Trees on either side but not growing over the track, it pointed through the space, dividing and winding, but also connecting places. When we walk a path we find ourselves assuming its’ purpose and shape, our questing hopes for its’ outcome.

“It’s easier in Summer,” I said, and it was the voice which told me so.

“Yeah, you’d think,” Anya said, swinging her arms, the fist which held the _pretty_ all her own. She moved with a rhythm created by the music, whether or not she consciously heard it. Our footsteps were percussive accents upon the cold earth.

Trees throwing off the finery of a season passed, into the place where warmth was only a memory, those leaves crackled underfoot like dry skin, like anything ready to be shed.

_All this sap and shine now fallen, now passed into darkness, now only dust._

Eventually we saw a boulder on the right side, a place where the track widened somewhat, a seemingly natural marker and we looked away into the woods, woodsmoke scented the air, wound within the other odors of leaves and earth and chill. The music was louder, but not nearer. Another wood-and-stone edifice similar to the others stood several yards from the track, a weather-beaten wooden sign hanging over the entrance, inscribed with a carving or painting of a face in profile.

_Faire_

“Oh this is the place!” Anya said, slightly above a whisper. “How does anybody get here, though?”

“They know where to turn,” I murmured.

I thought about how I had seen a few cars in that clearing, parked without reference to where they might be going. I thought about Anya’s car, sitting in front of the shop.

We walked toward Faire, upon a cobblestone path leading to the heavy wooden door, dark and scarred and its’ brass hinges green from the weather. A murmuring contained within, of voices and music and other sounds. The door was opened by a woman who looked to be related to the woman in the shop: same cheekbones and green eyes flecked with brown.

“Come, come there girls,” she said, waving us within.

I’ve thought about it, what it means to be welcomed. What it means to be invited.

We stepped over the threshold ever in the assumption that this was where we were meant to be.

Looking around, I could tell that those other people, who came in those other cars, they were all here. They glanced at us and then back to whatever had held their attention. We were led to a booth and seated, and the place seemed bigger on the inside, in a typical sort of pub style: long wooden bar against one wall with stools, a few tables, and then the booths against the opposite wall. Muted daylight through high windows shone upon oak fixtures, lanterns, sawdust on the floor, a fire burning in a stone fireplace, the stones like larger versions of the one Anya had bought. A ginger cat curled upon the hearth, drowsing in its’ feline fantasies.

“Don’t expect a menu,” I told Anya. “Probably the kind of place makes one meal a day for everybody who comes in.” We looked around and saw the truth of it: steaming bowls of stew and fresh bread with small pots of butter. The smell immediately made me feel famished.

A man who straddled the line between short and diminutive came out from behind the bar with mugs. I thought it might be ale, or more of that mulled cider we had drunk earlier, but it was only coffee. Really good coffee, but simply that.

“Are you wanting the lunch then?” he asked, and there was something cheerfully rakish about his expression, smiling, with eyes a-twinkle, but his graying goatee indicated experience and knowledge regarding any number of things. His smile was warm, and his face was almost cherubic but...debauched somehow, making for an interesting collision of impressions.

“Yes,” we replied, more or less in unison, and he winked at me and turned away.

“But I’m a vegetarian -” Anya called out, though to no discernible effect.

“Don’t worry, it’s stew, we’ll just split the bits between us.”

“I don’t want -”

“We’ll tell him when he comes back, okay?”

Anya pouted, then nodded and took a sip of coffee.

“This is, like, the best coffee I’ve ever had.”

I nodded, wiggling out of my jacket as it was warm in the - pub? inn? - room and let out a yelp.

“What’s wrong?”

“I cut myself -” I looked at my hand and there was a scratch along my index finger. I examined my jacket and found a piece of glass in my pocket. 

“Wait a minute, this is -”

“It’s that green glass from the shop, right? Like, a chip from it, maybe?”

“How did that happen?” I stared at it, a fragment no larger than a dime. I hadn’t cracked the larger piece that I knew of, but I must have. “Well I’ve got to go back and buy it, then,” I said. “Can’t believe I was so clumsy.”

“Hey, it looked like it was broken already. It was, like, a _shard_. It didn’t look safe at all, no wonder you cut yourself!”

“Yeah but I didn’t cut myself on that piece, even though it was sharp.”

The man - the phrase _the wee man_ ran through my mind - brought us wooden bowls of stew.

“Excuse me, sir -”

“Och, no airs for me then, girl!” he exclaimed, but he was smiling. He looked like he always smiled.

“Oh sorry, it’s just that I’m a vegetarian, so if that stew has meat in it, well -” Anya trailed off, smiling in apology.

“It’s what ye need,” he said, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t thought it odd all these people who had spoken to us were speaking as if they came from some other time. Their accent and diction were not a part of the area that I knew of, even as I did know small insular communities were nothing unusual in the region.

“It must be veggie stew,” I said, possessed of an instinctual need to agree with him. “Right?”

“It’s what ye need,” he said again and turned back to the bar. In another minute he brought us bread and butter and took back our mugs to refill them.

“Can I have a glass of water, please?” Anya asked and he turned back with a sharp glance. He also had hazel eyes, and I thought again of a pond, of green depths.

“Are you certain you want water?” As if the request was so strange as to warrant interrogation.

“Yes please,” she replied, and I nodded as well. 

He shrugged and went back to the bar.

“Who doesn’t have water?” Anya said, stirring the stew, as if she suspected there might be meat disguised as something else within.

“Well maybe they don’t have water to drink, you know? Because everyone wants beer, or mead, or whatever they usually serve.”

I took a piece of bread, buttered it and bit into it, then I was quietly stunned at how simple and yet overwhelming the flavors were. The bread thick and chewy, the crust slightly crunchy, the mingled flavors tasting of the earth and the air and the sun. Everything which went into the food could be honored on the palate.

“Wow, if you thought the coffee was good -”

“Oh my god,” Anya moaned around a mouthful of stew.

“What, did you find some meat?”

“No, this is like, I dunno, potato nirvana!”

I held my bread in one hand, looking down at the stew. I had a vision of the wee man preparing it, another intrusive thought, he hummed to himself as he sliced the vegetables, as he simmered them down and blended them with sauteed mushrooms and barley flour and cream and -

_How did I know this?_

But I could feel it, his intent, as he prepared the food. Without considering the action I took a spoonful and it was as if he touched me, fingers stroking the back of my neck, my hair. _Pretty._ His breath hot in my ear. I felt him as the stew told its’ tale of growing in the deep earth, the calm of vegetarian development, the rain, the sun, even the insects and birds which came to feast, the animals. Time was different, time was not measured in minutes. It was something which simply _was_.

I chewed slowly, I honored their sacrifice. A warmth infused me with each bite. The bowl was empty before I realized how long I’d been eating. Anya was running a finger along the inside of her bowl to lap up the last of it, a finger on the hand not holding the stone.

The wee man brought us cups of water and I tasted cold mineral perfection from within the living rock. It had a consciousness, but apart from our own, and from everything. It held the memory of the fire.

“Wait, no -” I told her, grabbing the hand which reached for her cup, “no, it’s not -”

“What?”

“It’s bitter, no, don’t drink it.”

I think about that too. Was I trying to save her? Or did I not want her to know what I learned? That this was all meant for me.

He brought us more coffee, and she drank it. Anya seemed satisfied with it.

I looked over at the bar, looked at the wee man washing glasses. He must have been standing on a box or maybe a platform which allowed him to see over the bar.

“Why are you making eyes at the hobbit?” she asked me and a vein of red anger throbbed.

“Don’t be stupid,” I muttered. “Besides, there’s something...pleasing, about him.”

“Uh-huh.”

He winked at me. Just the slightest, quickest of gestures, but I felt it as strongly as whatever I’d felt before.

“Pretty glass,” Anya said, looking at the fragment on the table, “such a nice shade of green.”

Again she moved to touch and I stopped her.

“You might cut yourself too, don’t touch it.”

She shrugged and went back to looking at her stone.

“Too bad you didn’t find one too,” she said, “I’m going to make this into something I think, maybe a necklace.”

 _Don’t fret girl_ , I heard. _There is more waiting for you, such treasures._

But this slight fragment of glass, it called to me all the same. It spoke of water and calm and stillness.

 _Come_ , it said.

I reached into my purse for my wallet and Anya was already up, asking the woman at the door if they took debit cards. This thought made me laugh, and I saw he was laughing too. She paid for our meal and I moved to put on my jacket, feeling full and drowsy. I drank the rest of the water and my teeth ached from its’ flinty taste.

 _There, it’s done_ , I thought.

 

*****

In Winter the meadow is draped in mist, a fog boiling from the cauldron of precipitation, obscuring what lies beyond, swaddling sound and confusing perspective.

In Winter it is not so easy to travel, the call does not come so close. You hear it only as a reiteration of desire, of summons, but the cold and dark keeps it from you, keeps it from touching you fully, longingly, easily.

But the cold does not seem to touch you, not as deeply as it could, standing there looking off into the mist, into the silence of sleep which fragments your mind like so many shards of broken glass.

 

*****

“Where did we _turn_? There’s no turn, it’s a straight line!”

Anya’s frustration sounds as cold as the air, voiced to trees and to sky which are not concerned with us.

_It tells you where to turn._

“I don’t know, we must have got turned around, though, it shouldn’t be taking this long.”

I clutch the tiny piece of glass in my pocket, and I can feel its’ sharp edges, it keeps me from wanting to lie down in the leaves and the mud beneath one of the trees. It keeps me wary.

At first we walked back to the track, at first Anya marched along, swinging herself in that internal rhythm which guided her when we came to Faire, but the sun slid lower and the shop grew no closer. We looked behind us, we could no longer see the boulder standing alongside the track. The light was deep gold, then orange, and everything was _alive_ in that light, gleaming, detailed and knowing, watching. I wasn’t cold, I wasn’t warm. I could feel...it...even if I couldn’t hear the voice, or see the intrusive thoughts in my imagination.

I want the voice to tell me _Come_ , but there is some kind of shouting, so far, so faint. And it is louder than the music.

“What is wrong with you?!”

Anya is directly in front of me, hands on my shoulders, shaking. Her eyes are wet.

“What?”

“You were just standing there, like you were in a trance or something.”

“What? No, I -”

“Stay with me,” she commands, taking my arm, her voice frayed and high. “We’re lost, we can’t get separated.”

 

*****

 

“No names,” he tells me, even as the feel of his kiss lingers on my lips like a sting. “I’ll not tell ye my true name, girl, but thou mayst think of me as ye please.”

We are standing in the meadow, dry grasses murmured in the wind, a supplication. His hands upon me, not intrusive, though the weight of his touch feels like possession. He takes my hand, examines the scratch on my finger.

“Och, thou paid dear, did ye now. So come with me, it’s soft and warm where I go.”

“Kiss me again,” I say, “if I’m drowning, I want it to be you who steals my breath.”

**“We can’t be -”**

His laughter is high but soft, bells in that murmuring wind, his smile a gentle gibe.

“It is not such as thou think. Though I could drown in yon eyes, pretty one. Thou trespass, and thou tempt. Who has taken the treasure and so now seeks to suck the very breath from me?”

**“We’re not -”**

“I didn’t,” I breathe. I _can_ still breath, I think.

“Oh but ye do. And here is what I promised ye.”

His voice holds pleasure, it holds ache, it holds that agonizing precipice between the dreaming and the waking. He opens his hand and there is a stone. It is round and smooth and black as obsidian. It is carved with my name.

“Pretty one, come now.”

**“Wake up!”**

I want it, I want to hold it, I look upon my name carefully inscribed, I look into his eyes like water, his hair like the darkened foliage, and the smile which says I have paid for that which I knew not I’d called.

My name - is it whispered, as he knows, as he always knew - is it being shouted, far off, from the realm I have stepped out of - I hear it, over and over and over.

I look from the stone to him, and he kisses me, again.

 

*****

_What doth ye desire among these trinkets, pretty? Since thou hast come such a long way._

 

*****

The hearth is cold, the autumn has passed. The woman at the door stared at me, arms folded across her chest. My clothes were rags, dirty and torn. The cat twined her ankles and fixed me with an orange glare.

“Och girl, ye had thine pleasure with the wee man, so greedy for his treasures dear. I have no use for ye now.”

“But, he said we would be joined.”

She laughed, high and bright and scornful.

“As he would say to any girl upon the Old Road who comes with the sun. But the gloaming is upon us now and ye must depart.”

“I’m lost,” I said, knowing I knew this, but not how or why. 

_I have drowned, girl, and so shall you, if ye can find the water._

“That thou are, certain, but ye must leave now, lest I set those who crave thy bones upon thy heels.”

There is distant music, there is shouting, there is his voice, honey-warm and chiming like bells. Voices floating in the breeze, singing, a song we should not be hearing, a direction we should not be following.

A sign which tells you where to turn.

A piece of glass in my pocket.

 

_Come. Are you coming for me, girl? Come now._

You walk. It is much easier in Summer, or in Fall. The path is clear, the path is straight. In Winter you cannot find your way to the water, You cannot hear him, or anything else, within all that silence. You survived the song but not the silence.

You try to step off the track, but you cannot, The water, that deep green you are meant to lie within, the same shade as his eyes, you cannot reach it. It lies beyond the limits of your invitation.

The Old Road, it tells you where to turn, and you wait for the command.


End file.
